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How to get a free website for your Rotary club

Mitty Chang unveils the free website offer to Rotary Leaders at Rotary’s annual training event in San Diego in January.

By Jermaine Ee, Rotary Club of Los Angeles

Mitty Chang and I, founders of Candeavor, met in the lobby of a budget hotel in Sydney, Australia, while attending the International Rotary Youth Leadership Awards at the 2014 Rotary Convention.

Although we were both from California, we came from very different backgrounds. Mitty is from the technology center of the world, Silicon Valley, while I am from the media & entertainment center of the world, Los Angeles. And while Mitty has over a decade of experience in the Rotary family (he is a member of the Rotary E-Club of Silicon Valley), I was just a newbie.

Project Doing Good’s bold offer

Despite our differences, one thing was clear from the beginning: we were both incredibly passionate about making a difference in the world, and we both love storytelling.

After less than a year of friendship, we joined forces and founded our digital marketing agency, Candeavor, on the belief that good marketing can change the world. Project Doing Good first came about when Mitty and I were sitting in the Four Points LAX hotel bar. Collectively, we give a lot to Rotary so Mitty suggested that we consolidate those resources and make a bigger impact globally. Naturally, we turned to what we know best: digital marketing.

How strong is your web presence?

We wanted to solve one pressing challenge in Rotary. So with our limited resources in mind, we decided we would focus on helping Rotary clubs all over the world create a stronger online presence. We wanted to build something every Rotary club could use. All we needed in return was some effort from the members of each club.

This has been a major under-taking for a business of our size (we just founded in 2015!) We juggled many ideas to figure out the best way to pay for this incredible project. We even considered a donate button specifically for Project Doing Good to help defray our costs of time, energy, and resources, but ultimately decided it would be better for any donate button to support the work of the Rotary club and The Rotary Foundation. So in the end, we simply decided to get started and give it all for free.

So here we are in the beta stage of Project Doing Good, looking forward to seeing if our ambitious, little naive, little silly side project will make the impact that we intend. We know that regardless of the outcome, this is something Mitty and I care deeply about and we’ll have no regrets.

I think this is a great project to begin with, more it will cause good for all clubs in the world not only to understand the importance of on-line presence but also to have one “image” on Rotary brand.

I am trying to fill in the Join the Beta – Project on your website, but it doesn’t have “Button” to submit the filled in form. Help?

I’m an Australian living in Jakarta, Indonesia. I’ve recently joined Rotary in my new home city and have been asked to renew our Club’s web presence, in line with Rotary International standards and to better promote our charity projects.
As an IT sales & marketing veteran I’m aware of the benefits of a strong, well-designed web site as well as the pitfalls that invariably result from an inappropriate technical and marketing approach.
My Club’s current website suffers from these shortcomings, through no fault of anyone other than a lack of appropriate resource and knowledge.
So, I’m very interested to participate in your Beta project and would welcome the opportunity to contribute any experience that may be of value.
Kind regards,
Geoff Whiteley

Marilyn, since we are in Beta, the features are still being developed. As we get close to the official launch on July 1st, we will have a sell sheet available. Thanks for your suggestion – we really appreciate it.

Hey there- This would not affect Club Runner. All your admin tools are still through Club Runner. This landing page is simply the outward facing website for your club. If you need a little more clarification, please email us at support@doinggood.io

This is such an amazing proyect!!! Thank you very much for all your work!!!

I’m currently working on the page of my club and since I have not experience I search for servers and hosting because I’m literally a newbie at this, no idea how to code or what to do, so any tip and any kind of help you coul gave to others like me from a small club where we don’t have designers or programmers is a big issue!

Hope to get more info about this and maybe not so far in the future all the Rotarians in the world will buy the domain with you!!!

Ernie, I applaud this move to get every club a landing page, but as you’re in the UK, are you aware of the RIBI club template, currently used by around 1200 clubs in the UK and Ireland? It’s written by a Rotarian and provides a full website without specialist knowledge, with slideshows, calendaring, “what we do” pages, members-only pages etc (too much to list here) and the only cost is a £50 donation to Foundation per year. That’s currently raising £60,000 annually for Foundation.

If you are aware of it and choose not to use it that’s fine, but if not have a look at http://www.rotary-ribi.org/index.php and check out the list of clubs to see how some of them use it in practice.

For those without any web presence though, this looks like a great opportunity.